


Vir Sulevanan [First draft]

by TeganCantDance



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age - Various Authors, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Book: Dragon Age - The Masked Empire, Elvhen Lore, Elvhenan Culture and Customs, F/M, POV Third Person, Pre-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 18:03:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8906371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeganCantDance/pseuds/TeganCantDance
Summary: "I lay in dark and dreaming sleep while countless wars and ages passed ..."It is the Guardian's duty to serve the Dread Wolf, to watch over him during his ancient slumber. As the current Guardian, Ellara thought that it was her fate to care for the unresponsive God of Rebellion whilst what little was left of the People withered in the shadows of history. Only for the Dread Wolf to suddenly awaken. To speak of plans of renewal, restoration. Of saving their People. To task her with aiding him in his next and final grand rebellion.Unfortunately, not all heroes are as heroic as history portrays them as being, as Ellara may soon yet learn. That to restore the Elvhenan Empire, a cruel price must be paid. "... I did not wage war against immortal God-Kings without getting my hands bloody."





	

Emerald hued eyes opened, despondently. Her sigh heavy, escaping from parted plump lips that did not smile, and had not for some time.

Nearing a week, Ellara hazarded a guess.

Standing up from the aged stone-forged seating that matched the rest of the stone-forged furniture, which the Children-of-the-Stone had always seemed to favor, within her quarters, Ellara crossed the room. One hand pulled open the stone drawer of one of two chest-of-drawers, eyeing its contents, counting silently. A dozen candles were what had been distributed to her two weeks earlier, and, deliberately, she had allowed for candlelight to burn down to the wick, not so as to count the passage of daylight but to count by days how long it had been since last Felassan had visited her dreams.

Or the dreams of anyone else within their clan.

Six. Only six untouched candles remained for her use, confirming her guess. Taking another from the drawer, Ellara murmured, softly, out-loud, ”Where are you, Felassan?”

No-one else seemed to share her concern. Wandering was in Felassan’s nature, and why he was one among three chosen and allowed to roam the world outside, acting as both the ears and eyes of both their clan and their keeper. Nearing a year was how long that it had been since last he had returned to their sanctum, and he had been gone for much longer before in the past, others had reminded her. Only they were wrong, they didn’t understand. Even during the past year, Felassan had spoken to Ellara in her dreams almost, but not quite, on a nightly basis.

Talking to her. Joking with her. Transforming her dreams to reflect glimpses and frozen portraits of the world that he had seen, and knew that she never would. His gifts that lifted her spirits, gave her hope. He had never left her in silence for so long.

Her footsteps resounded loudly upon cold ancient stone, but Ellara no longer heard such an echo. Decades – _centuries_ – of being left alone in the spacious stone room that served as her quarters had made her accustomed to her solitude. To every minor detail of her cold prison. Her dwarven tomb.

Rusted eyebrows pinched tightly, her breath exhaling heavily once more. A quiet self-reprimand. Her thoughts were becoming too morose, too bleak. Thinking as such wasn’t helpful to anyone, certainly not for herself. It only fed her fears, of which she had so many in recent days.

She feared for Felassan, for the numerous dreadful fates that her mind kept conjuring to explain what could have kept him away from her dreams for so long.

And she feared for what it meant for herself if he did not return.

Quickly, quietly, Ellara replaced what little of what was left of the previous day’s candle, lighting it with a momentary thought and practiced will, rather than the sweeping gesture of her hands, which she instead swiped impatiently at her prickling eyes. Blinking, unshod tears forced back, before she turned her attention towards the stone bed set within the center of her room, occupying so much of the vast spaciousness. Unsurprisingly, her charge did not stir where he slept upon the stone mattress. He never did.

Not once during the nine hundred years in which Ellara had served as the Guardian. Nor during the centuries served by the previous two Guardians before her. Often Ellara doubted that he would ever awaken, that she too would choose the comfort of _uthenera_ and hand down her duty to the next Guardian rather than endure his maddening silence.

“Fen’harel _will_ awaken, _vhenan_ ,” Felassan had promised, his amethyst hues holding her own emerald gaze sincerely, when last they had both spoken. Sitting side-by-side, a gentle hand had caressed her cheek, coaxing her attention away from where she had been romanticized by the lush forested scenery that his magic had transformed her dream to replicate. “Soon. Now that I have found a gift more tempting than his dreams.”

Ellara had attempted to coax a less vague answer from him. Prodding him to explain his meaning, what his “gift” actually was. However, rather than answer her, Felassan had smiled, eyes bright with amusement. “Now when have I ever had the opportunity to surprise you? Allow me this chance. Besides, I want to see you smile - _truly_ smile – in the moment that your duty finally comes to an end.”

Ellara had wanted to believe him, still did, but couldn’t bring herself to trust in what she knew to be the impossible. All knew that the Guardian’s duty was to serve the Dread Wolf. To wait on him, for him, awaiting the demands that would give their title, their duty, purpose. A duty never ending, so long as he would not awaken to release the Guardian from what they had sworn to devote themselves to.

Only Felassan had ever allowed Ellara to forget the servitude that she was forever bound to. In his absence, his silence, even her own ribs, caging her heaving lungs, felt oppressive.

Wordlessly, sullenly, Ellara began to prepare what she needed to keep Fen’harel’s slumbering body clean, comfortable, a daily undertaking that had been her schedule, a part of her duty, for longer than she could recall. Steps that she could walk without thought, as instinctive as drawing breath.

Still, she took care in pulling back the thin sheets, which she had previously tucked-in about him. In undressing the man whom many had thought to be a living god. Her hands gentle, patient. Dipping sponge into warm, scented, soapy water before applying the soft fabric to smooth alabaster flesh, muscle. She did not bare the Dread Wolf any ill-will nor did she blame him for her fate. It had not been him who had named her his Guardian, at only eight years of age.

She could not fault him for choosing a labyrinth of dreams and ghosts of the past over the tragic shadow that his people had become since the fall of Elvhenan.

Softly, to fill the silence, to focus her thoughts, Ellara sung. Words to a song remembered fondly from her long ago childhood. She sung it often.

“Sun sets, Little One, time to dream. Your mind journeys, but I will hold you here.”

Observing from up-close, Ellara noted that dark stubble had begun to grow sporadically along her charge’s scalp. Such could not be allowed for one dreaming in _uthenera_ , not even when for one counted among the Evanuris. Leaving the Dread Wolf’s side, Ellara moved to collect a razor from where she had left it last before returning, quickly, to sit on the bed’s hard edge.

Having applied both soap and water, so as to clean and soften the soft surface of his scalp, she began to shave the stubble away. Using deft and well-practiced strokes. “Where will you go, Little One, lost to me in sleep? Seek truth in a forgotten land. Deep within your heart.”

Gently, she wiped clean her charge’s dome and then her razor’s blade. Turning, her side faced away, she placed all of the equipment that she had used in cleaning Fen’harel’s body down upon the stone floor, beside his bed. Intending to pack it all away properly, after redressing him.

“Never fear, Little One. Wherever you shall go, follow my voice. I will call you ho-“

Turning back around, Ellara’s voice died in the middle of her words, the middle of her song. Rendered mute as her green-eyed gaze froze, locked upon hues of cobalt blue. Her thoughts equally as frozen as she struggled to comprehend that the Dread Wolf’s eyes were _open_. That he was _staring_ back at her. Something that was impossible.

 _I’m dreaming_ , Ellara thought numbly. She had to have been.

Only when the familiar arched shape of dark eyebrows, lines in which she had stared at daily for nine-hundred years, shifted, struggling to frown, did reality strike Ellara, unpleasantly cold. Her lips parting on a sharp intake of breath, a gasp. And she moved instinctively, to carry out steps that she had been trained to follow but had long since hoped that she would ever have to use.

Her hands resting against both chiseled angles of a strong, commanding jawline, she focused her energy. Channeling the flow of her arcane focus into his own body, to feed him strength. “Help!” Shrieking, screaming, Ellara prayed that her alarmed volume would carry down the winding hallways outside of her quarters. That one of the others had somehow held a fancy to wander her way, to hallways and rooms that only she had had a need to walk in recent decades. “Help me, please!”

**Author's Note:**

> "Vir Sulevanan" - the entitlement of the Dalish to a property of their people, for an errand they must perform.
> 
> Solas/Fen'harel is by far my most favorite character within the Dragon Age universe, and whom I find to be the most intriguing.
> 
> This series is predominantly intended to be a means to depict Solas as how I perceive him as being, like a tribute. However, it is also a means to portray ideas, theories and predictions regarding the elvhen and what impact that they might have in the current and future Dragon Age timeline, as well as upon Thedas in general.
> 
> And although I have started this series to take place a year before the events within Dragon Age: Inquisition, in accordance to Solas's own admission in the Trespasser DLC, I intend to carry it through to the DLC's conclusion. It might be a slow burn but I hope to make the romance between Solas and Ellara a rewarding read.


End file.
